The Watch - 'Monarch: Legacy of Monsters' and the Thanksgiving TV Guide

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Chris is joined by Sean Fennessey to talk about the first two episodes of 'Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.' They discuss where this show fits into the "monster-verse" canon (1:00) and what it says about Apple TV's overall streaming strategy (19:00). Then Chris gives a few recommendations for TV shows to watch with family over the Thanksgiving holiday (30:51). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Sean Fennessey Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Rye, and I, am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, a massive unidentified terrestrial organism. It's Sean Fessie! Do you think Kaii could just cut in the Godzilla roar for my response here? I actually have to fill an entire episode. Greenwald is traveling for the holidays. And maybe we should just have a second half. It's like almost like a white noise pod where it's just Godzilla roars and see how it does numbers. I mean, the audience loves white noise. Yeah. I use white noise every night. Every night. So should all of our pods just be white noise?

I mean, that would take a real chunk out of the white noise, like little pod. You know, like those little machines that they make. It would take a chunk out of their business. That's fine. All right.

I'm okay with that. Sean, I have you here because I want to talk to you about Monarch Legacy of Monsters. I feel like this is, we are so back. We are back kind of, man. I mean, we are kind of back.

And I'm glad that Apple is a big enough tent to make Killers of the Flower Moon and Monarch Legacy of Monsters. my guy Tim, your boy Eddie, they are supporting the arts, whether you like it or not. So today we're going to talk about the first two episodes of this show.

I would not say you need an advanced degree in the Monsterverse to enjoy this show, but would you agree with that? I think there's some upside to watching Godzilla, the 2014 film from Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers? Yeah, legendary.

It's the legendary monsterverse, and I think it's a franchise you and I kind of have like a, Not even a begrudging, but like a kind of like secret affection for. I like it quite a bit. However, each of the four films don't really seem to be in conversation with one another. The four films in the franchise are Godzilla from 2014, directed by Gareth Edwards. And then in 2017, we got Kong Skull Island.

Which was a movie that you and I were like, we got it. Here we go. They were like, what if King Kong but Apocalypse now? Yes. Which on paper, I was like, you know, just auto-asphyxiate me into joy. And in execution, I thought it was a little daffier and goofier than I wanted it to be. Yeah. And then we got Godzilla King of the Monsters. Which is Michael.

Michael Dardy's movie. Which I thought had incredible monster work and some of the worst character work you'll see. And that's the beginning really of like the whole monarch storyline for that. this, right? Yes, although there are indications of it through all of the films. Like, some of the very cool Brian Cranston, Julia Pinoche stuff in the first film. I mean, Brian Cranston and Julia Pinoche were in the Godzilla. That's the thing is that I was going through all these films and even going through the show we're about to talk about.

The amount of talent involved in these. It's wild. Like Bear McCreery doing music for one of these movies for King of the Monsters in 2019. And now it's this franchise is being stewarded sort of by Adam Wingard. Yes, he directed the Godzilla versus Kong film, and he is making another film in this series. And so now this is an attempt, I think, to pull together a lot of the threads.

Together, you know, Andrew's home in this new series plays the character that John Goodman played in Kong Skull Island. You know, the shades of the Ken Watanabe character from the Godzilla film seem to be informing a lot of the Japanese characters from this film. So there is an attempt to kind of pull all the pickup sticks together and hold them in an origin way with the show? Yeah.

I've only seen two as well. Yeah. So I have not watched ahead, and so we'll only be talking about the two that they released last week. The third episode goes up, I believe, on Wednesday. And it takes almost a full two hours to get to the reveal of one of the reasons for the price of admission, which is Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell is in this series as a sort of aging, somewhat kooky, ex-military guy named Lee Shaw. we also get a healthy dose of him as a young man played by Kurt Russell's own son, Wyatt Russell.

And there's a ton going on in this. One of the things that Andy and I have been kind of like bumping our heads up against in the last couple of weeks, I know you've been super busy with movies. So aside from the curse, I don't know how much TV you're taking down. I'm taking down so many episodes of The Watch, though. The Watch is my favorite podcast. I fucking love the watch.

Andy, I tell them all the time. I think you guys are doing incredible work, But I am developing a parisocial relationship, not with the watch, because you guys are my actual friends who I love, but with TV. Right. Because of the watch. You're kind of like, I follow TV through listening to pods about TV. Yes. It's a really busy time for Sean, but I also think that there are certain things that Andy and I are kind of starting to get allergic to that I would imagine you are like, I need an epipen if I have to see three flashbacks to start like a pilot of a show.

So this series starts with such stuff. they almost make the bug into a feature though where now I think by the second episode once you get used to all the time hopping that the show does you're kind of like I don't really let's go I thought the first episode was a pretty tough hang honestly because there's so much orchestration that needs to happen to introduce

a number of characters on two different timelines and both of those timelines are flashbacks but one is 60 years ago and one is 10 years ago so I thought it was a little bit challenging to understand why they structured the show this way by the second episode, which seems to be like a reverse of a reverse flashback, which I'd never really seen before in a show.

I thought I got into it, basically. Yeah, so let's just do a little bit of like sort of broad strokes. This is created by a comic book legend, Matt Fraction, along with Chris Black, not the hell long gone, Chris Black, but a screenwriter who's worked on some Star Trek stuff in the past. Matt Fraction is responsible for really like the only comics I still check in on, which are like his Hawkeye run, Casanova. Like, I really enjoy his stuff.

I think he's got an incredible sensibility. Like, it's essentially like all the shit that I am interested in. Matt Fraction seems to be interested in, and he applies it to these different, like, iconic superhero characters. And so to see him working with Chris Black on this idea, which is essentially like what's going on with the human beings in the Monsterverse. The major thing that you need to know about this is this, it's like basically an era-spaning conspiracy theory.

thriller adventure that's also dressed up as a multi-generational family drama about the discovery and cover-up of Godzilla and the Mutos, which I mentioned are the massive unidentified terrestrial organisms. You're a big Muto guy.

Who's your favorite Muto? You know what? I got to say, I was pretty into that fucking bad at the end of the second episode. No spoilers. But that guy throwing a boat of 5,000 miles across the Pacific is not bad work. Superbat. That's your guy?

That's my dude. Not Mothro. I like the idea that they're just doing this layering job of the secrecy of the monarchy of the monarchy and the efforts to sort of keep what is actually happening out here in the world with like all these monsters underground

both literally and figuratively with the secrets of these families these two or three families that have kind of collided here it jumps back and forth between a sort of contemporary-ish 2015 storyline set in a world after Godzilla attacked San Francisco

it turns out he was actually just warning us about Rob Manfred's plan to pull the A's out of Oakland. Well, he failed because they're going to Vegas. And a young woman named Kate school teacher goes to Japan to settle her father's late affairs only to find that he had another family. And then we were also given a storyline from the 1950s where a doctor or scientist named

Keiko Mayura along with a sort of soldier named Lee Shaw who is overseeing like a kind of project and Billy Randa, who is the young version of John Goodman is played by Andrews Home, are investigating some strange monster-related occurrences in far-flung places like Kazakhstan and the Philippines. There's a lot of fun casting, as we have mentioned. And the show kind of has this built-in way of being both serialized and episodic

because, and we're going to kind of get into details and spoilers here if you haven't watched these yet. But in the first episode, Keko presumably dies. She is pulled into a pit of hatching monster eggs, essentially. And you're like, wow, that's too bad. And then the next episode,

they're just doing seven years earlier. So you can kind of jump around timelines to constantly, like... I've never seen that. I've never seen a dual timeline show that then does a flashback on one of the timelines. I know. I know. And now that's asking a lot of the audience.

So here's my idea about what they're doing and without further knowledge or whether they planned on doing dozens of seasons of this show, nobody really does. But, you know, let's just, for the sake of argument,

say they're going to do two or three seasons. You could do what I thought this show was going to be, which is X-Files and the Monsterverse, which is like a group of people in the 1950s running around the globe,

investigating weird isotopes and tremors, and you have presumably seven years of area to cover where you can go, oh, there was a test here, or there was like a forest disappeared there. Monster of the week. Yeah, and I think that that would be pretty cool,

but they are obviously trying to weave together this massive storyline with this contemporary story that also features Kiercy Clemens as like a hacker, Joe Tippett, who the homies recognized from the January 6 episode of Morning Show and also Mary of Eastdown. Just like all my oath keepers out there who really keep it real for Merivistown and The Morning Show. Yeah.

It's a very unique Vendioca. No, I'm sure Joe Tippett was not actually at the Capitol building on January 6th. I have a couple of questions for you about this, though. Okay. So now currently, after watching two episodes of this, the last couple of movies, I know you said there's been some diminishing returns. What's your monster versus portfolio position? Is it aggressive? I'm holding.

Okay. I'm holding. I will see any movie in this universe. Any movie. It does not matter how bad. One thing that I, as a man of 41 years, really enjoy is when Godzilla's just steps on things. That's just something I like. I like to see Godzilla wreaking havoc on our world metropolises. So if that is in play, I would like to participate. Okay. One thing I also like is watching a monster punch another monster in the face. That's actually, like, really what I'm interested in.

That's the heavyweight title bouts. I'm not here for the undercard. Godzilla versus Kong, I thought it paid off. You know, like the last 20 minutes of that movie gave me what I wanted. Getting underneath the bureaucracy of the corporations that are trying to manage the monsterverse, a little bit of a tough sell for me. I have limited time these days to view television programs. I'm fully immersed in the curse.

Yes. And it's taking up a lot of psychological weight. I'm sure that's a really good place to be on a daily basis as you drive around. East Los Angeles going to Target. No, the thing is like... And you imagine the guy at the Tide section in his long Zoom? Amanda and I just talked about

the new Hunger Games movie on the big picture. And that is the same thing that this is. This is a brand extension. This is a, as Amanda put it, a reheating of something that has value to keep it in the consciousness as we wait for the next installment of something else.

And I know why this is happening. We understand. All you need to make it work is just a little bit of ingenuity and a little bit of strong performance. I love White Russell. Kurt Russell is a god to me. So I'm going to watch the show. Like, I'm going to finish the show.

Is it a little bit, like, astonishing that these two guys are in this show? Well, it's been noted that I think this is Kurt Russell's first TV appearance in 60 years or something like that since he was like a teenager. Which, honestly, like, I'm surprised because I would just assume he would have, you know, got in the back. Ag sooner? You know? Like, yeah, just like, why is Taylor Sheridan

not putting him... Just replace John Dutton? Yeah, just like Jim Dutton. Just make him like a Sacramento Marshal, you know, who drives around and picks up criminals. I would watch that show.

As far as better understanding monarch, do I need that? I don't know. I mean, one of the things that's been kind of interesting to watch with this series in particular is that unlike a lot of them,

there is seemingly no designated creative... overlord of it. You know, it's passed from director to director. I think Jordan Vote Roberts was very excited to do Skull Island, but then it was taken over by Michael Dautry. It was taken over by Adam Wingard.

These scripts are passed around by tons of very talented, very well-paid screenwriters, including like Dan Gilroy and Derek Connolly and all these. You see Toby Harold's name on a lot of the Monarch stuff. So I think that there's obviously somebody, you know, maybe that is

Joby-Hare. Maybe he is sort of like the guy who's like keeping all the strands together. And now Matt Shackman does the first two episodes of this. And I wanted to quickly ask you about the Mac Shackman part of this because this is a guy who's done dozens, if not hundreds of episodes

of television, including 43 episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Directed two late period Game of Thrones episodes, I believe, a succession episode. But he's he's been on almost every prestige TV show. Yes, yes. Billions, good wife,

like everything you can imagine. Then does Wanda Vision, which is obviously, in retrospect, probably the most creative, creatively compelling Marvel series other than Loki. First four episodes of that show, I think, are the best thing Marvel have done in television.

Yes, and is now the prince who was promised over at the MCU, at least in so much as that he is being given the Fantastic Four Keys. And I could imagine, especially with Dustin Cretton not doing Avengers now, that the Shackman kind of like is going to get the... He can do the Rousseau's leap if he wants to.

And he does a good job in this. I thought that the interesting decision that they obviously had to make in the show is everybody is Werner Herzog here. They want to see the baby. You know, they want to see the monsters. What did you think of small-screen Godzilla's? Not Godzilla itself, but like small-screen mutos and then the brief shot of Godzilla that we get in the San Francisco sequence.

It reminded me a lot of my experience watching The Mandalorian, where there are these kind of great moments of CGI Star Wars World Monsters. There was one in particular where there was sort of like a buried creature in Mandalorian. I want to say season two. And I thought that was one of the more ingenious sequences of that series and that it looked pretty good for a TV show.

And I thought this looked pretty good for a monster show. Yeah, Jess Hall shot it. Yeah. But it doesn't have, because it's episodic TV, it doesn't have, nothing climaxes. There's, like, monster movies have a very specific series of beats that they have to reach as you watch them. I've seen hundreds of monster movies in my life. And because we're trapped in this slow drip of information because of the nature of episodic TV, they can't give you payoff. Right. I think it's okay.

I don't have to see Godzilla for 45 minutes in a TV show. That would be a good idea either. but I, with the exception of your bat friend, I think I wanted more. Yeah. I think hatching bug eggs was neat as the conclusion to the first episode, but also we know that this is like

the main character of the show who we just met and she's not going to die. So the stakes are low. And it's a challenge with Monster of the Week shows in general. You know, it was a challenge with X-Files too. Sure. Yeah. So I think... But X-Files, to your point,

I think X-Files knew, ideally, they would be making 20 episodes a season for as many seasons as they possibly could. And there were different storylines, whether it was Mulder and Scully's romantic kind of chemistry or the larger cigarette smoking man, alien invasion stuff.

But they could also do, there was a weird murder in Iowa that we need to sort of figure out and why does this guy think he's a vampire, but he's just a guy, you know? Do you think that Monarch is intended to be a five-season show? I don't think you can,

sustain something that looks this expensive and has this many people in it. Like, I don't think Andrew's home was like, I want to play Billy Randa for 50 episodes of television. Now, maybe he did. I have no idea. You know, it's like... It's got to be nice for the mortgage, though. Sure. Yeah. And I think it's probably like pretty exciting to like go wherever they've shot the Philippine stuff or the Kazakhstan stuff. I mean, I can't imagine it was in Kazakhstan. And do this stuff. There is a fun... My monarch! There's a funny moment.

I was watching in one when they're running away from the hatching eggs and they're like, go, go, go, go, run! And I was kind of like, this is what Alan Ginsberg felt like when he was like, I've seen the greatest minds of my generation. And it goes all the way back to Shia running from like CGI Transformers. And there's that montage of Shia in those movies just be like, go, run, go, we've got to go, run, run! And I was like, these guys are all so fucking good at acting.

and they're just like reduced to screaming run against a green scream. I thought you were going to say, it reminded you of watching Zach Wilson on Sunday. Go, go, go, go, run, run, run. Not backwards. Yeah, it's tough.

For Kurt Russell, this is what he does, man. Like, he makes movies like this. Sure. He is very at home. And Andrew's home, you know, he was on workaholics. It's all good. He can hack it?

I mean, in terms of, like, it's longevity. Like, can a show like this go on for years and years and years? But you know what it can do is if you start to chop up the timelines the way they are, there's really no reason why they can't say in the second season we're going to do a 1970s Alan Pakula version of this with a different cast who are now related to the monarch. Well, okay, are you going to get annoyed with me if I start doing like why does this exist

and what is Apple doing? No, you know why it exists. So this has been under discussion with the performance the killers of the flower moon, Napoleon opening this week. Apple has lessons in chemistry starring Bree Larson right now. You guys hilariously covered that show on this podcast.

They've had a lot of big ticket items of late. And they're obviously making a very serious push towards both prestigious awards-worthy stuff and easily consumed content. And we know why that is, obviously. It draws brand awareness for their incredibly powerful company. It gets them closer to powerful people and exciting people.

You get to work with Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese. you got to do it. If you can work with Godzilla, you got to do it. You know, like there's, all these things make sense

and their strategy. But the thing that differentiates Apple from all these other companies is, I guess to Amazon to some extent, although they've been in the content game longer, is they don't, they're not trying to like make money

from their streaming service. Right. It could eventually be something that, you know, generates a profit for them, but it is just a marketing tool. That is all that it is. Yeah.

And this show is a really interesting question in a different way than Killers at the Flower Moon because I'm like, that movie is getting 10 Oscar nominations. The box office doesn't matter for that movie. And it never did. They didn't make it for that reason. Right. But Monarch, you would imagine, has been created

to get people to sign up. Yeah, I think it ticks a quadrant box. You know, I think it's probably, if this had been some version of a Blockbuster movie this past summer, I think I would have seen it. Yeah, I agree. And I... The Godzilla prequel, basically.

Yeah, and I think that I can't really begin to understand Apple strategy because when you look at like, even my basic understanding of the kind of money that they make from phones and computers that they sell and the services that they sell, like the actual, like, everything from having Apple music or having Apple storage or using whatever services that they have, even credit cards, all that stuff. I don't even understand what the math is. on their investment in entertainment and the return on entertainment.

The best guess that I have is that if you are targeting the kind of affluent consumer who can afford to spend $700 on a phone every 18 months, and you want them to increasingly centralize their experience of the digital world on their Apple TV box,

their iPhone, their Apple music, their whatever, giving them a variety of stuff to watch that feels like their phone, very high-end, but also very consumable, makes sense to me. Now, I don't know whether there's, like, a long-term strategy for them to be a buyer

of one of these distressed asset streaming networks out there and were they to go and buy, you know, Macs or whatever they could do. Like, would that change the dynamics of what they're offering? I think that the myth of, like, Apple sitting on a trillion dollars, in cash and they could just save any industry they wanted to at any given moment.

I don't really know what Tim Cook wants to do in that regard. But yeah, I think that Apple is making shows like this because they think that people who use Apple products want to watch shows like this. Right. So, I guess, is that, is this ultimately a long-term rounding error or a genuine pursuit?

Like, the acquisition thing is funny. This has been rumored for years. Apple will buy Disney. Apple will buy Warner's Discovery. Apple's going to buy... Apple's going to save every... Yes.

And they never do. You know why? Because they make things. They make things wholesale. They take ideas from other companies, I'm sure, and they evolve them. Yeah. But they make things. And so they're making their things now.

We see what they are. They are prestige film projects. They are F1 movies with Brad Pitt. They are lessons in chemistry. They're hijack. You know, they're making... Kind of like, kind of the airplane movies of TV. Sure.

They're also filling a huge void that's being left there because a lot of these streaming services are, these streaming networks are strapped for cash, are going through mergers or identity crises. So it's like Showtime being sucked into Paramount and Max and Warner Brothers combining in discovery and all this stuff. And it's like, you could make an argument that 75% of the stuff that's on Apple

five, ten years ago would have been a Netflix show, an FX show, or an HBO show. Masters of the Air should be on Max. I don't understand. That's a stunning development that the third part of this trilogy of World War II miniseries from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks,

I would imagine that they initially had the conversations with Warner to be like, do you want to continue this relationship? And Apple obviously stumped up what was a lot of money for what looks like an incredibly expensive show. Okay, well, let me ask you this. then with this in mind.

So in 10 years, Disney will be making films and television. There's no question. This is at the heart of their business. Generating new properties to get people invested in the rest of the world of saleability that they have. Will Apple? Oh, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. Because there's money in it?

Because there's prestige in it? Because I think it offers them... I think people are going to increasingly want stuff to watch. and they're going to want it on all the devices, all of which are made by Apple, and there is a dark, dark world out there where Apple is one of like one of two or three places

still making this stuff. Yeah, I'm wondering, because I wonder if what we are actually just experiencing is the hangover from a boomlet. We had a streaming boomlet for five years, inspired by Netflix getting way ahead of everybody. I hear you guys talk about this all the time. I hear Matt Bell and me talk about this all the time.

And because of that cat, that kind of free cash flow that they have, this can be a lark. They can do this for five years, and they can decide, you know, we don't want to do it anymore. We're like,

we'll just license things. Yeah. You know, or we're no longer producing the Apple TV sets hot box, and so we don't care. Like, and because they do go forward

and develop things and spend money on things, developing a car, developing a television. They've gone down the road as a corporation trying to figure out new products, and then they'll abandon them

because they have these core properties that works so well. So, you know, when I growls about physical media, when I grouse about like the kind of like watering down of all the stuff that we watch, I'm always interested to know what the long-term life cycle is,

something like this, because if Monarch is meant to be a show that's on until 2030, then you would imagine they're in it for the long haul. If this is just like what you're supposed to watch until the next Adam Wingard Godzilla movie. I think they have pretty big ambitions. I think that stuff like the MLS deal,

I think the rumors about them getting, involved in some of the live sports rights. You think they'll do one of those? They have baseball, obviously. Yeah, and I think it's basically a... It seems like it's a race between them and Netflix for one of these companies or Google to jump in. I mean, like, slowly I am starting to use YouTube TV

to watch all of this, all of my sports now anyway. Because the NBA League Pass is really good on YouTube. NFL League Pass is really good on YouTube. Like, I can see that being pretty soon a reality. This is not even... That would necessitate an Apple Google combo. Well, I mean, I have that. I have my YouTube app on my Apple TV box.

That's true. I do too. I do too. That's how I watch everything. That's how I watch most of my stuff now. I watched a long conversation between Ryan Johnson, Michael Fastbender, and David Fincher on YouTube. And I was like, this is better than any show I watch this week. I agree with you. And that is TV now in some ways, too.

And that's what's interesting. But it's in such stark contrast to the $100 million Monarch show. Which is like pretty good. Yeah. Not bad, but I don't know. Is it... The question is, like, was this... I guess my question is,

did you guys make this show because you wanted to make a prestige drama set within the world of the Monsterverse? Or did you make it because you were like, we can get monsters on Apple TV? And I think at the end of the year, when we do an ad and it's like Brie Larson, Godzilla, Austin Butler, and Robert De Niro,

like we all pat ourselves on the back about that, regardless of how well these shows do, I think that's ultimately the case. I think you nailed it. I think that's really what it boils down to. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. For years, HBO, one of my favorite things that HBO would do

would be the kind of preview of what's to come. And they would do the montage of the new season of the Supranos or Game of Thrones. Yeah. Or like a movie that they had that Warner's had produced or that they had license that was coming to the channel. You'd be like, oh my God, I can't wait to see Get Shorty on HBO.

I saw one second of John Travolta and Get Shorty. So I understand the impulse for that. It's great marketing. It's just weird when it's the 30 Rock, you know, corporation that makes the, you know, that makes like mops, but they are making TV and movies. And not only TV and movies, but the highest grade TV and movies. Yeah.

I try not to get too into my head about that because isn't that what, like, I mean, didn't GE own, you know, like Paramount? They did. They owned NBC, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, we're not, we're not that. far removed from, you know, we can't go back to the 1930s and 40s.

So it's always been like part of a corporate portfolio. I think that the thing that nobody understands is why is Apple not, not, doesn't have to play by the same rules as everybody else. What is one Apple show that I haven't seen that I should watch? Did you watch Hijack? I did not. I think you would really like it.

But is that the best, like, is that really? I think that given what you've been talking about with like, I don't have the time. I have to watch too many movies. And then when I start a television show, if you start with like a flashback and also like drip, drip, drip, drip of information. Hijack is just like, this is six episodes or whatever. It's basically told in real time.

There's like one or two dumb subplots, but for the most part, it's Idris Elba being fucking incredible. Okay. Like you would watch that over the Thanksgiving break and you'll be like, that was deeply satisfying. So I do need a show like that for the Thanksgiving break. So maybe I will watch it. I'm sure Eileen will watch it with me.

But I think on this show, you guys have been talking about like, we started a show. We didn't really like it that much. We stopped talking about it for two or three episodes. Or we don't want to kill a show for nine weeks. Right. You know. You got to just,

just got to do CR and Andy's picks. You got to, what you just did with hijacked. That's what I'm doing in the second half of this episode. Are you really? CR's Thanksgiving. Okay. Service channels.

Because that's what I'm, I'm the people. Like, that is what the people need for TV. I know. And I also realize that next year, like fewer shows are going to be made. And this won't be as much of a concern because there will be consolidation and all those things.

Nevertheless, I don't think that the like moment to moment recap of what happened on hijack matters that much. But what does matter to me is CR in eight sentences saying here's why you need hijacking your life. And then the rest of the conversation can be wet chicken. You know what I mean? Just just just. Listen to you executive producing the watch. I love it. Well, because I'm deeply immersed. This is my only opportunity to give feedback because I don't have to worry about Andy being mad that I'm giving feedback. We've made Amanda wait for seven minutes for us to begin recording the big picture today. Thank you for recording me and Sean.

I'm going to come back and give you a little bit of a TV guide for your Thanksgiving break. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you for going to the Monsterverse with me. And have a great Thanksgiving. Thanks, buddy. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner.

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Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. Okay, Kaya, you know, Sean gave us this idea. It's one I've been thinking of anyway, but it was a good idea from Sean about needing a watching guide for Thanksgiving because this is honestly one of those times of the year where people have a lot of hours on their hands, and they actually might just be sitting around sometimes with family members that they're done making small talk with. And they'd love to have something to throw on for the family.

Do you find yourself watching a lot of TV over the Thanksgiving break? Yeah, absolutely. And I also find myself prior to me going home, kind of amassing like an arsenal of shows that I can be like, hey, guys, let's put this on. Let's keep the magnifying glass off Kaya and put it on some piece of prestige television. Well, I'm here to help. Great. Now, the first one I did think of, thinking of you, Kai, because you are one of the chief supporters of the Bravoverse.

And, like, you know, you're watching Vanderpump. You're watching Below Deck. I know you love your reality television. I do. This first suggestion is for anyone out there who loves reality television, this show just happens to be, the reality happens to be in the late 1800s. And that is the Gilded Age on HBO Max. It is not obviously a reality show. It's the sort of newer. series from Julian Fellows who did

Downton Abbey, a much beloved portrait of upstairs, downstairs, class strata in England, set at the famous home in England, the famous manor, Downton Abbey. This one is more of a citywide spectacle in New York City at the end of the 19th century, I guess, and it's as like the Industrial Revolution is happening, the rise of robber barons,

but beyond all those big socio-political economic movements. This is a show about nothing. Here's some of the plot lines from the second season of the Gilded Age. Hit me. People are trying to decide whether or not to buy a box at the Metropolitan Opera House or the Academy of Music. A servant is building a clock. A young man is sleeping with an older widow. A new rector is in town. Most of the scenes in this show are basically two people talking in a room and then one of those people going to another room and telling everybody what that person just said. That's very Bravo-esque.

So, yeah, spot on. And obviously, at the Watch Industries, we support Christine Bransky and everything she does. She plays Mrs. Van Rine in this movie, or I think Agnes Van Rine. And she's sort of an old spinster paired with Cynthia Nixon, her sister, and they kind of look out their windows

and comment on everything that's happening in New York High Society. Carrie Coon plays a woman named Mrs. Russell, who I just found out. Her first name was Bertha. this last episode. I was shocked to hear that. There is some serious stuff. Right now, there's going through a big

union busting plotline on this show. Booker Tee, Washington has shown up. They're doing some stuff down south. But, like, honestly, most of the show is, like, who is being quartered by whom and who has money,

is it money new, is it old, and who's mad at who? And a lot of that is just, the bare bones of reality television. There are four episodes into the second season on Gilded Age. I got to be completely honest, you could probably start with the second season. That's great.

You'll be just as underwater. Yeah, anyway. You have maybe already watched the first season. They're like, you know what, let's just dive in with my parents or my family for the second. There will be a lot of like, who's this and why is she mad and what's this one's name? But I think that this show is actually pretty user-friendly.

So to be completely honest with you, my wife loves this show, but I had missed the first two episodes of the second season. Last night we watched three and four, and about midway through three, I was like, of course, honey, that's Henderson. He's from Pittsburgh. And it's like, you'll figure it out if you pay attention. One thing I really did notice about Gilded Age of this season, and maybe this is the case for the first season as well, I don't really remember, is for as silly and inconsequential as some of the plot lines feel, it's very brisk. Even though these episodes are 55 minutes, I think each scene lasts about, like, I don't know, a minute. Like, they're very, very quick scenes. There's a lot of them.

There's a lot of drama, a lot of gossip going on. So there's always something to hang your hat on. That sounds great. There's really nothing like low stakes period drama for the holidays. You know, it's Crown. Yes. And this maybe is a little bit less, like, agonizing and traumatic as this season of the Crown is. Although I have not watched the season of the Crown is.

Although I have not watched the season of the crown, I am saving this season of the crown for watching with my mom. But if you have a chance, if you've watched the crown, I highly recommend listening to the Crown podcasting that's being done on the Prestige TV pod. Okay, my next suggestion for folks, and this is one that we've covered a little bit earlier this year, is if you want a bingeable comedy that you can binge in practically one night.

So obviously during the pandemic, we saw this sort of explosion of people going back to sitcoms like Friends or the office and watching them over and over and over again, Seinfeld, so on and so forth. I think one that if you wanted to do it over the course of a day or two that you could do pretty easily, is jury duty on free view. Now, freebie is cool too because you don't need a subscription necessarily

at Prime Video. You can just fire that up. It's pretty easy to have on, like, most smart TVs will probably have some sort of access to Amazon. Did you get a chance? We talked about jury duty, someone on the show, but did you like it? I love jury duty.

I think it's in the running for one of my, favorites of the year. It's just such an unexpectedly sweet show. And yeah, I think the concept was really fresh and something I hadn't previously seen. So that was enjoyable. Yeah. And that's, this is what Kai is saying is exactly right. The same qualities that people sort of respond to, I think, in the office and the good place and parks and rec, where there's like a healthy dose of cringe comedy, but there's also this like incredibly kind heart. It reveals itself over the course of six or seven episodes with jury duty. And honestly, it's a surprising show.

It's a laugh out loud show. It's a really high concept show. But it's one that you'll feel totally normal watching with your mom or your dad. Yeah, I would say like minus one scene I'm having mine, but I would not totally parent's day. Very parent friendly. Okay, this one, I don't know how parent friendly is. It depends on your parents. But I was thinking about this because this is a show I've only recently checked out.

And I'm not even through the first season, but I've really been into it. it and it's sort of a random watch for me. I had heard from some folks that The Missing, which is a British show, it's on stars. There are two seasons of it. I had heard that that would be kind of like a good mayor of East Town replacement drug. This show, I believe, was on in like 2017,

2015, something like that, the first season. But it stars James Nesbitt and Francis O'Connor. And it's essentially, it's pretty dark, but it's a child abduction story set during, the 2006 World Cup in France. And so this British couple is in France for the World Cup. They wind up having to go to like a small town and their child gets kidnapped during that time.

Basically the mystery itself stretches out over the course of years where, you know, they're still trying to find out who abducted their child years later. But I thought it had a really electric combination of both Marevistown kind of family drama. and SVU, like Law and Order SVU kind of mystery unraveling. So if you were looking for something, albeit quite dark, but if you have like a dark appetite after Thanksgiving,

I would check out the missing. It's on stars. You can usually do like a free trial of stars for like a week. So if you're home and you wanted to watch this, this might be something you can check out. I mean, when you're saying filling Mary of East Town whole in my heart, that, you know, that's what I've been missing this year.

I haven't really felt like it's as has like the comic relief of like Gene Smart in Merivistown or some of like that fun stuff but it does definitely have some of that the elements of that and there's a second season with Keeley Hawes in it that if you're fully into the missing you can check out that as well everybody has an uncle

who's like history uncle who's the uncle who likes talking about Jack Ryan who wants to watch Tom Clancy shows if you're out of Tom Clancy shows, if you've gotten to the bottom of the Jack Ryan barrel, there's always special ops lioness. Oh.

So on Paramount Plus, it might be a little bit dark, insanely violent and dark, but I think that the middle part of the season, like, from episodes like two on, has more of like a Jack Ryan feel, like once it gets out, like up until like, I think maybe the last two episodes are a little bit more like politically ambiguous, but like I think, but the middle section is like much more like traditional like doing an op, dealing with the fallout of the op, lots of calls to Washington, D.C. So if you have Jack Ryan uncle at the house, if you have Jack Ryan and dad at the house, special ops lioness on Paramount Plus might scratch that edge. If there's one thing that can bring families together, it's Taylor Sheridan.

Yes. He brings us all together. He's the big tent. It's funny you say that bringing families together. So I tried to think of something for everyone. This is a show that we've talked about quite a bit on the watch this year. But I do think it's probably the most satisfying thing for the most amount of different people at a Thanksgiving holiday. If they're in the house, if you guys are all looking for something to watch, it's something that you can finish in a couple of nights. And that's hijack on Apple. I just, I haven't really met anybody who thinks hijack's bad. I mean, yeah, because it's just so, it's so satisfying and it so is what it is. And it's not trying to be anything more. Yeah. And so I just think that if this is the situation where, you know, obviously if you've seen hijack already, it might not be the most rewarding second watch, but you, who knows, maybe you pick up on stuff. Because, yeah, I feel like there's Easter eggs throughout the show that you might pick up on more

the second time around. This is the hard part about. modern television though is that there's so much new stuff to watch all the time that something like the missing might get lost and something that might be rewarding like watching hijack again you're probably like okay but they've got we've got murder at the end of the world we've got the curse we've got the crown we've got so many new things on to check out i think murder at the end of the world could be a decent holiday watch i wouldn't necessarily want to watch those episodes again but that's another example of like a pretty pretty cool mystery with a nice like romance at the

center of it. I'm looking forward to watching the third episode of that. I'm trying to think of what else we might have missed over the last couple of weeks that I would recommend. I mean, the missing is obviously something because I wanted to go a little bit into the bag. And Andy and I, you know, we've talked about things like, gosh, I don't know. I mean, like, dark is a really good one if you want to start a binge, but it is like a huge commitment because it winds up being three seasons. What was the spinoff called? Or not the spin-off, but So, yeah, if you liked Dark, you might want to check out 1899, which came out in 2022 on Netflix. And I think, and it was sadly already canceled.

So I don't know if that was going to expand to different places. But that is like almost headier than Dark in what they were trying to do. And it was all set on a luxury liner going across the Atlantic in 1899. And I found it to be pretty contained in one season. I didn't feel like it left off too much. own a cliffhanger so that you were not going to go in and be disappointed that it's not getting a second season. Yeah, I thought it was a little bit long episode in terms of its episode count, but I think that you could have a lot of fun checking it out. The only thing I would say is that

for bigger crowds of people watching it, like there's so many different languages being spoken that you can't really look at your phone while you're watching. It's quite dense, yes. Yeah, so if you were trying to do any like Black Friday phone shopping, good luck while also watching 1899. I have one more recommendation for you. Starstruck, which I think is a show

that's frequently mentioned on Jam Session. The third and final season of that just came out a little bit ago on HBO Max or The Max. And, you know, it's just a delightful show.

Episodes are like maybe 30 minutes and it's only a six episode season if I'm remembering correctly. So very easy to breeze through. I think all seasons are only six episodes, so could easily breeze through that in a few nights. And it's just very delightful rom-com. And speaking, just to cap us off, I'll do another piece of British popular culture, which is if you're one of the five people in the world who

hasn't seen Beckham, that seems like an amazing, even if you just watch the first two episodes. If you've got anybody in the family who's a sports fan, I think that they would really enjoy watching Beckham. Yeah. And that's on Netflix. co-sign that. So, Kaya, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving. We can wrap it up there. That's five or six or seven shows that you should check out during the Thanksgiving break. Andy and I will be back next Monday and we'll get back on top of all the new TV.